American
Lawyer, touted around the nation as the flashiest and most daring insider
publication in the legal profession, has done an unusual about-face and
withdrawn its ranking of U.S. District Judge Charles R. Richey as the second-worst
trial judge in Washington.

The reversal caused
almost as big a rumble in the federal courthouse here as did the much-ballyhooed
national survey last July, in which Richey was ranked just behind Judge
June L. Green for the dubious distinction. Richey was "seriously
flawed," the magazine said then, because he was "excessively
image-conscious."

The magazine's back-of-the-book
correction appears in a small box on page 32 of this monthhs issue. It
follows a lengthy report about an "all-out war" against federal
judges by the Church of Scientology. Richey, who presided over the conviction
of nine church members on conspiracy charges, was one of the targets of
that campaign. The article describes constant attacks on Richey by the
church's lawyers, including the hiring of a private investigator to look
into Richey's personal life and efforts to remove Richey from the trials.

American Lawyer says
it has learned belatedly that one of the principal sources on which it
based its low rating of Richey had a Scientology connection.

"The lawyer
[Alexandria attorney Phil Hirschkop] who most vehemently denounced Richey
was one of the Scientologists' defense counsels," the magazine said.
Hirschkop also referred the author of the rating article (who has since
left the magazine) to other lawyers who represented the church. Apparently,
those lawyers also spoke badly of Richey.

"Without the
lawyer's vehemently derogatory remarks and his referrals to other 'sources,'
our reporter says he would not have named Richey in the survey,"
the magazine said.

"We were the
unwitting channel of one of the Scientologist's attacks," Steve Brill,
founder and editor of the two-year-old tabloid with a circulation of 25,000,
acknowledged in an interview last week.

Stories listing the
best and worst of anything draw readers. But surveys of federal judges,
which are becoming increasingly popular and at least grudingly accepted
by many judges, are a tricky business.

Some surveys, like
that of Maryland judges published last week by The Washington Star, use
massive questionaires, follow-up phone calls and computer analysis. The
study was approved by the Maryland Bar Association.

Smaller surveys like
that of American Lawyer, which are done in large part on the basis of
a few dozen interviews with anonymous lawyer sources, are much more prone
to error and distortion.

Brill says his reporter,
Kevin Fogarty [who recently left the magazine for a variety of reasons],
was misled. Brill said that after the survey appeared, he talked with
some Washington lawyers who mentioned in passing that Richey was "not
that bad a judge." Still, American Lawyer stuck by the assesment
-- until recently, when the reporter who wrote the current article on
the church's tactics told Brill, "We are a part of this" campaign
to discredit the judges. Brill said it was then that he ordered the backhanded
correction, which he refused to call a retraction.

Whatever you call
it -- and it sure sounds like a retraction -- Brill didn't have to do
it. Other than the casual comments he says he received, there was no ongoing
outcry to change the ranking. And with the passage of this much time,
some editors might not have been inclined to admit a mistake. He also
faced no legal pressusres.

Brill concedes the
survey is "impressionistic," something like voting for the most
valuable player in baseball. "We were shocked to find unanimity in
most places," he said, making the choice fairly easy. It is, he added,
a lot easier to pick a "best" and "worst" than it
is to rank every judge.

"Our reporters
are told to be very careful," he said, but there are always pitfalls.